Mycroft Makes a Museum
by BaskervilleBeauty
Summary: Mycroft Holmes is the executor of Sherlock's estate. Vignettes ensue. Complete!
1. The Letter

**Mycroft Makes a Museum**

_Author's Notes: As usual, I set out to write one thing, and end up with another. Not part of my The Great Hiatus/Curtain Call universe. Chapters are more like scene breaks. I'm too lazy to invent my own Mrs Hudson, so she is Rosalie Williams. Anything you recognize isn't mine._

The letter was waiting for him when he returned to the Diogenes Club at precisely fourteen minutes to five, the same time he had always returned from his office in Whitehall. It lay sealed in its envelope on a silver salver, placed carefully beside the ashtray on the small table beside his customary armchair. There could be no mistake of its recipient, for it was well known that the seat belonged to Mr Mycroft Holmes, and it was this man's face which was currently twisted into a frown.

The fleshy folds of Mycroft's face contorted and rippled as he glared at the envelope, everything in his expression revealing how much he resented the break in his routine. It was 4:46pm, and according to his custom, he should be sinking into his armchair, lighting a cigarette, and perusing the periodicals. However, for the second time in a just over a week, he had been interrupted by letter.

The first, delivered on the eighth of May, had been from Dr John H. Watson, MD, a friend and colleague of Sherlock's. Mycroft had met the man three years prior, in connection to the trouble with Mr Melas and the Greek conspiracy. The good doctor, compelled by his moral uprightness and sense of duty, begged to inform him of the circumstances of Sherlock's death. A Swiss coroner's report and newspaper clippings were enclosed. The handwriting, revealing the emotions of the writer, trembled slightly, but pressed inexorably onwards. Watson hoped, that as the only surviving relative, Mycroft would know what to do with Sherlock's estate. His own journey back from Switzerland would yet take some days, but that he would help with arranging the affairs of a man who had become such a dear friend to him and a revered hero to so many others.

The doctor's character and intentions were in no doubt, but it was all most inconvenient. The Crown was dealing with issues of a pressing nature, and then there was the sensitive matter of the stonemasons in South America. He had Sherlock's notarised wishes, but without a body, there could hardly be a funeral. This was no time to deal with landladies, solicitors, and property. The letter was returned to its envelope and placed in the inner pocket of Mycroft's smoking jacket.

Patting his chest absently with one heavy hand, Mycroft Holmes reached with the other to the letter on the miniature tray. Tearing the top fold with a paper-knife, he extracted the contents. Inside the cheap envelope with an Italian postmark was a sullied playbill from a performance in a Florentine theatre. Mycroft squinted at the title of the entertainment. The name was worthy of any East End music hall: it was called, "The Vanishing Act." He did not have to examine the envelope or its contents further to know that there would not be any more clues to the identity of its sender.

This communication was a risk; and any action that would result from it would equally be a risk. If it were noted, deciphered, and understood, there would be lives and livelihoods at risk. Mycroft pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyebrows contracting in calculation. The first letter could be discarded. The second letter must be attended to. And yet, there was the coal-price report to look into…


	2. The Typist

**The Typist**

_Author's Notes: see first chapter._

A timid young woman of about twenty ascended the front steps of 221 Baker Street and rang the doorbell. A careful inspection of her person would have told the interested observer that she was a typist. She had the bent stature of one who spends all day hunched over a machine, and she had also begun to develop premature wrinkles around her eyes from squinting at the keys. She was dressed with the kind of strict modesty demanded of girls working in a masculine environment, and the overall impression was that of a poor, frightened, spinster. Anxiously biting her lower lip, she clutched her purse closer to her chest and intensely studied the ground, averting her gaze from her bustling surroundings.

The door opened briskly, and the startled visitor found herself face-to-face with a slight woman whose grey hair was pulled into a tight know at the top of her head, and who wore an impatient expression.

"Yes?" The older woman inquired.

"I - that is, I – Err…" the young typist stammered.

"Are you here to see Mr Holmes?"

"Yes! I mean – _no_!" cried the confused girl, fingering her purse nervously.

"He's out. I haven't seen him for weeks, truth be told. Whatever the problem is, you'd best go to the police, dear, or write to him if you're truly desperate. He might take an interest when he returns." The older woman moved to shut the door again.

"Wait!" the typist exclaimed. "Are you Mrs Hudson?"

The door swung back again, slowly. "_Yes_," came the cautious answer.

"It's just that I'm to deliver a letter for you," the girl finally spat out.

Sighing the sigh of one who has been made to experience too many peculiar situations in her life, Mrs Hudson stood back from the open door and nodded behind her. "You'd best come in, dear." The typist complied and found herself in the darkened front hall. "Now dear, what is this all about?" Mrs Hudson asked, closing the front door behind the frightened typist.

"I don't rightly know myself, ma'am, just that I'm to give you this –" the girl fished a thick envelop out of her handbag and handed it to Mrs Hudson.

"Who gave you this?" the older woman asked with some suspicion.

"Mrs Oakley did, ma'am, she's the head of the typing pool. But she said it came from a clerk in the Ministry, and he got it from a gentleman a bit higher up, if you know what I mean. I was to get an hour off to deliver this, she said, and to tell you to direct any further correspondence to the Diogenes Club." The typist recited this last part from memory, her eyes focused in the distance.

The line of Mrs Hudson's mouth grew thinner with displeasure. "You can hardly tell me who you are, and who sent you. I don't suppose you will be able to tell me what precisely I am to do with _this_?" She waved the unopened envelope.

Confused, the typist shrugged. Read it, I suppose ma'am."

This statement proved too much for Mrs Hudson, who hurriedly bundled the lady typist back onto the street. "Thank you very much, my dear, but next time, tell them to use the post!"


	3. The Landlady

**The Landlady**

_Author's Notes: Thank you Elsie Cubitt and Shire Cat. This chapter is more or less what I set out to write initially, but it spun out of control. I often wonder whether I write these stories, or whether they force me to write them._

Letters, Mrs Hudson reflected, were no good thing. Hr Holmes got letters all the time, and all they ever caused him was trouble. Troubled people troubled Mr Holmes with their troubles and then Mr Holmes would go and resolve their troubles, leaving her, Mrs Hudson, no end of trouble to keep the house clean and keep track of all the riff-raff coming and going. And then there were the chemicals and the bullet holes – but that was another story. At least the rent was paid on time, except this month, when he had paid it early. And then he disappeared…

Mrs Hudson shrugged at her thoughts and tore the envelope open. The first thing she discovered inside was a newspaper clipping. This was a black omen – newspapers were full of bad news and were good only for wrapping up fish guts for the rubbish bin. She skimmed the headline: "May 7, 1891. Reuters." It wasn't even _new_ news! "Detective killed in Swiss falls. Died hunting master criminal." _Detective_? But surely not her Mr Holmes? Yet there it was, typed neatly and clearly – "Mr Sherlock Holmes, late of London." So he was dead, then, and Dr Watson hadn't even come to tell her personally. She would have to clear the rooms and find a new tenant. The name of his opponent was there, too: "Moriarty." She remembered the face of the man and the way he sneered as he placed his card on the table in the front hall, and demanded to wait in Mr Holmes; rooms. She shivered at the memory, suddenly feeling an irrational guilt.

Her hand shaking slightly, she put down the clipping and fished out the next item in the envelope's contents. It was a letter, written on government letterhead in a thick, sprawling hand. It read:

_Dear Mrs Hudson,_

_I regret to inform you that your lodger, Mr Sherlock Holmes, has been accidentally killed while abroad in Switzerland. Before he left, he left a document stipulating the disposition of his property with me, and I will come next Tuesday at eleven o'clock to discuss the provisions of his will. _

_Sincerely,_

_Mycroft Holmes._

Mrs Hudson stared at the paper dumbly. With a name like that, it had to be a relative. All the better, then. They would know what to do with all that peculiar nonsense upstairs.

She folded the letter and the clipping back up carefully, and inserted them back into the envelope, putting it aside. Standing up, she smoothed the front of her skirt and then her wiry grey hair. What she had been doing before that queer young woman arrived lay forgotten. The hum of people and traffic outside the front door now seemed unfamiliar and dangerous. She looked up to the dark landing. Not knowing what compelled her, she started to climb the stairs slowly, clutching the banister rail with every step she took.

At the top, she extracted from the pocket of her skirts a large, heavy key ring, and found a small brass key to open the dark wooden door. The click of the lock startled her, though it was hardly louder than the _tick-tock_ of the tall case clock on the landing. The creak of the hinges seemed to protest against the violation of the door being opened.

The room was dim, and the daylight barely filtered through the drawn blinds. The air was musty; the smell of tobacco and sulphur clung to the furniture. Mrs Hudson glanced around, half-expecting some great change to have taken place since the death of the room's former occupant, but the tables and chairs stubbornly remained as she remembered them. The bookshelves stood resolutely mute and unresponsive. Even the papers, scattered over every flat surface, refused to whisper an acknowledgement of absence.

Mrs Hudson took another step forward, and found herself close enough to the fire-grate to notice, through the gloom, the outline of Mr Holmes' pipe on the mantel. It lay there unemptied, carelessly tossed aside in the hurry of Mr Holmes' last day in London. The sight of it was too much – Mrs Hudson turned on her heel and ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Her breath remained ragged for some time.


	4. The Two Brothers

**The Two Brothers**

_Author's Notes: Thank you Silverthreads, Shire Cat, Lady Razorsharp and Elsie Cubitt. I'm sorry for the delay. I've been the kind of busy that isn't productive. I'm also sorry about the appalling spelling errors contained in the last chapter; I swear I edit these ruthlessly, so I do not know how those typos get there. Blame will rest with the document manager for now._

Mycroft Holmes was not a man given to superstition, so he did not interpret the sudden chilly draft that invaded his office as an omen of unpleasantness to come. Being possessed of a much more rational mental constitution, he rightly interpreted the draft as the direct consequence of a door being opened and admitting a visitor. Although he would never say so in as many words, the two amounted to very much the same thing: a damned nuisance.

Mycroft Holmes, for all his human foibles, was still a gentleman, and so he did not audibly grumble when a shadow fell across the draft pages of the latest government budget he was editing.

"Do be seated," he motioned to the hovering figure, looking up from his interrupted work, and lacing his fat fingers across his waistcoated belly. He waited less than a second before adding, 'Now that I have given you the courtesy of inviting you to stay, will you return the favour by telling me your name, the reason for this unprecedented invasion, and how it is you managed to gain access to these premises?"

The intruder, who was now revealed to be a tall, thin man, of distinctly reptilian aspect, and a military bearing, recovered from a moment's discomfiture to a look of mulish determination. "My name, sir, is Colonel James Moriarty—"

"—late of India, given to drink, with a violent temper, although not altogether unintelligent, as you have penetrated this far," finished Mycroft coolly. "And you are here because you have some grievance against the estate of my late brother for the death of your late brother, the Professor Moriarty."

"How dare you," spluttered the Colonel, his eyes bulging from their curiously sunken sockets.

"I should ask the very same of you, Mr Moriarty," Mycroft countered quickly.

"Colonel!" objected the visitor.

Mycroft smoothly continued. "Colonel Moriarty, you have entered my place of employment uninvited for no other obvious reason than the apparent connection between us, both being the surviving siblings even whose mutual annihilation does not justify such liberty and familiarity of conduct. I ask you again, what do you want?"

The Colonel's face grew red and his whiskers trembled warningly. "You will cease this slander against my brother's name and renounce his actions as that of a murderer!" he exploded, slamming down the yellowing clippings announcing Sherlock's death on the desk like an accusation.

Mycroft's grey eyes took on a steely glint and he rose from behind the expanse of mahogany to his full height. First drawing a breath, he proceeded to speak in clipped tones. "Colonel, I doubt that even you would have considered my accepting such a demand. I can assure you that any persistence in this matter will lead me to undertake legal action against you. Therefore, as a gentleman I ask, and as an employee of Her Majesty's Government, I order you to leave this room immediately. I will warn you now that if I am ever again troubled by the name of Moriarty, the consequences will be swift and unpleasant. I bid you good day." Mycroft sat down and began to concentrate again on his work.

His visitor rose, cheeks burning with fury. "You have not heard the last of this, Holmes!" he exclaimed, and he replaced his hat and stormed out of the office.

When the papers on his desk settled after the gust of wind from the slamming door subsided, Mycroft shook his head. "No, I daresay I have not," he said softly. He fingered the newspaper clippings absently.


	5. The Bereaved

**The Bereaved**

_Author's Notes: I have been writing, honestly! Unfortunately, it has not been fun writing, but real-life related writing. Even overdosing on Holmesiana during Conan Doyle week on BBC4 couldn't help that. Plus, this chapter was really hard to write, for reasons I am sure you will understand when you have read it. Thank you to Mysterylover17, Zantetsuken-Steel Bladed Sword, Shire cat, Susana, Elsie Cubitt, and Silverthreads._

Dr Watson was very nearly late for his appointment in Pall Mall. It was foolish and effeminate to fuss so over his outfit, but he could not make up his mind about the black. The etiquette manuals were silent on the matter of how to mourn a friend; it was not one of the rigidly prescribed categories of appropriate public mourning and there were no instructions for how much black was appropriate for how long when one's friend and colleague disappeared over a waterfall in Switzerland.

Mary had finally intervened when he began to contemplate an armband, and bustled him off into a cab. Driving up past the Carlton, Watson fought an involuntary shiver as he simultaneously recalled walking to the Diogenes Club with Holmes, and imagined Holmes admonishing him for being so sentimental. He willed his mind to close off, to concentrate on the business at hand and not to get carried away by dramatic notions. He focussed his gaze on the small of the waiter's back as he was shown through the carpeted halls to the Stranger's Room.

Mycroft Holmes was waiting inside, and barely looked up when Watson entered the room, but the doctor caught the fleeting glimpse and made sure that it had, indeed, registered the black hatband, the sombre cravat, and the black gloves with which he had accessorised his usual outfit. It was important to him, to show this small sign of lasting loyalty and affection for a lost friend.

"I felt it was appropriate," Watson said gruffly, with a shy nod down to indicate his clothing. "Especially given the anonymity of his death. They still haven't found the body, and I stayed on in Switzerland for a fortnight longer, to make certain." He stood uncomfortably, staring at the toes of his polished shoes, feeling like a schoolboy called into the headmaster's office. It did not seem a time for pleasantries, and Mycroft Holmes did not seem to be a man likely to be much comforted by talk of the weather.

Watson stole a glance at Mycroft and saw the older man's eyebrow cocked up in the same curious querying way as his brother. The delicacy of the scrutinizing gaze was lost in the man's heavier features, however. It was too much, really, to see this bloated pastiche of Holmes sitting before him, not making any effort.

Watson moved forward, extending his hand. "My condolences," he said, and tried to mean it as his hand was gripped by Mycroft's meaty palm. The base of his thumb was stained yellow from the snuff, the doctor noticed awkwardly. Released from the handshake, Watson sank into a nearby chair. He felt sweaty and patted his forehead with a handkerchief.

_Mycroft really was a devil of a man_, the doctor thought. _His very presence could reduce a collected gentleman into a quivering mass of jelly. The Yard could use him in investigations,_ he ventured briefly, and was about to laugh, but then recalled what Sherlock had told him about Mycroft's sluggish personality.

To avoid meeting Mycroft's eyes, Watson began to talk. "I expect you will want to hear all about how it happened," he said.

"No, for I have read your account in the Strand Magazine," Mycroft replied, and patted the cover of a tome resting on a little table beside him.

Surprised, Watson looked up and across at the older man. "You have read it?" he repeated.

"Yes," answered Mycroft in the same languid tone Holmes used to indicate he was unimpressed. "I wonder that you did not clear its publication with me," he said, reaching into his pocket for his snuffbox.

"I- I assumed that after James Moriarty wrote those letters in the Times that you would agree that a true account of the death was called for!" Watson exclaimed, staggered.

Mycroft smiled wanly, and with infuriating slowness, inhaled his snuff. "Truth is, at best, a nebulous concept, my dear doctor," he said. "But never mind that. The Colonel's letters were, as you say, provocative. But I fear that your version of events may make proceedings more complicated than they had to be."

"What proceedings?" Watson sat up, alert.

"Some of Moriarty's cohorts are, at present, being held by the authorities. But, alas –" Mycroft replaced the tortoiseshell snuffbox into his breast pocket, "others remain at large. It is not outside the realm of possibility these unknown elements may choose to target those who blacken the name of the one they called leader."

Watson's eyes narrowed as he concentrated to follow the Jesuitically complex reasoning of Mycroft's last sentence. "I am not afraid of threats," he concluded confidently.

"No one said anything about threats, dear doctor." Mycroft's comfortable smile faded in an instant and he fixed Watson with an intense look. "These people do not operate on threats, they take swift and merciless action." After a pause, he added, "It is just as well I have disposed of my late brother's property."

Watson felt the room spin. An immense outrage bubbled up inside him. Not only did Mycroft Holmes appear unaffected by his brother's death, he had also turned Watson's best intentions into something bordering on criminal clumsiness, and had now deprived him of the opportunity of grieving for his friend. It was not to be borne.

Watson rose and said stiffly. "I have still in my possession the cigarette case and walking stick, which he left at the top of the Falls. Would you prefer that I return them to you so that you may dispose of them also?"

Mycroft, who had remained seated, raised an eyebrow. "No, Dr Watson. You may keep them as a memento."

As he took his leave, tears pricked in Dr Watson's eyes, and he was very clumsy in getting into the carriage. It took the journey home for him to gain control of himself, though he was shamefully distant from Mary the whole evening, and indeed, never recounted to her the ugly details of what had transpired. The Alpine stock and cigarette case were placed inside a cabinet in his office in his surgery, and when he would look at them, he would take pains to remember only the dignity and grace of Sherlock Holmes, and not the cold arrogance of his sibling.


	6. The Consultation

The Consultation

_Author's Notes: Thank you Susana, Forgotten Phoenix, and Lady Razorsharp. I am not sure I agree with my own characterisations here. I know that's not what an author is supposed to say about her work, but I don't. In my mind, they act differently. But this chapter wrote itself this way, and what can an author do but comply? Inspired by where I live, and also by the Patrick Gowers soundtrack to the Jeremy Brett series._

Baker Street always disturbed him a little, in the same way that one is apt to be disturbed by an autumn wind on a summer night. This was ridiculous, of course, since it was a perfectly ordinary street, with rows of tan-brick Georgian terraces, unassuming and unmodern, perfumed by the usual city smells of coal dust and horse dung, of cabbage and tobacco leaves. The people were the same as on any other street: vendors, hawkers, servants, coachmen, landladies and business people, all bustling about their daily business. But if one knew who lived here, as Mycroft Holmes most certainly did, one was inclined to view the proceedings with some suspicion, seeing hidden crime and despair collecting in pools to wash at the front steps of 221 Baker Street.

The front steps had to be managed delicately, not just because of the man's great bulk, which moved up towards the front door after being deposited out of a hired hansom, but also because of what the front steps represented. For all intents and purposes, for the foreseeable future, these front steps would not bear the footsteps of Sherlock Holmes; and his brother Mycroft was here to ensure that they would not bear anyone else's footsteps, either.

He rang the bell. The door swung open almost immediately, with the kind of haste that suggested that he was anxiously expected. There was no maid; instead, he was face-to-face with a small, wiry, elderly woman, whose bony shoulders and rounded back appeared even more so in her plain black bodice. Her eyes were round with expectation, but her mouth was set in determination, and she stepped back from the door to let him in.

"How intelligent of you to let the maid have the day off, Mrs Hudson," he said as he let her take his hat and gloves.

"I've dismissed the maid," the older woman replied with a shrug. "It didn't seem sensible to keep paying her when I don't have any lodgers left. Please go through, my sitting-room is just through there," she gestured with her hand toward an open door off the front hall.

Mycroft followed her instructions and entered a low-ceilinged front room with a screen across the windows, to keep out prying eyes. It was furnished simply, with a few personal items that had been collected some decades earlier. With the exception of a single armchair in the corner, the furniture did not appear to have had extensive use. He waited for Mrs Hudson to sit down, and then sat down himself, in a rosewood armchair with a linen antimassacar across the back.

"So the house is virtually empty?" he inquired, following on Mrs Hudson's earlier comment.

"With the exception of myself," the lady retorted. "After Dr Watson's marriage, I considered finding someone else, but Mr Holmes volunteered to pay the extra rent, and he proved to be such a handful that I didn't much relish the idea of having another bachelor to look after."

"And now?" Mycroft inquired again.

"And now I am finding it a relief not to have to deal with all the traffic of people at all hours of the day and night coming to see him…" Mrs Hudson trailed off for a moment, then with a guilty start, resumed, "Not that I wished him dead, of course!"

Mycroft leaned back in his chair and examined the room again. His eyes wandered from the plant stand in the corner, which supported an exhausted aspidistra in a brass pot, to the mantelpiece with two Staffordshire terriers, to the knotted hands of Mrs Hudson, resting in her lap. "Have you been receiving many visitors inquiring after Mr Holmes?" he asked.

Mrs Hudson shook her head. "Not since that girl the other day who came with the message. And it wasn't for him, it was from him. And not from him, but about you. No," she finished firmly.

Mycroft nodded slowly. He fixed Mrs Hudson's gaze and held it for several moments. "I think it prudent to leave the rooms as they are," he said. "I will continue to pay whatever my brother was paying you, and for Dr Watson's old room as well. You would do well to get another lodger, to keep up appearances, but put them in some other rooms. I want to preserve Sherlock's rooms _just as they are_."

Astonished and reeling from the intensity of Mycroft's gaze, Mrs Hudson nodded. "Would you like to see them?" she offered.

"That will not be necessary," Mycroft declined, and began to rise out of his chair. Out in the front hall again, placing his hat back upon his head, he towered over Mrs Hudson. "I don't think it will be necessary to mention the rooms, or myself to anyone, either," he added. "Good day, Mrs Hudson. I shall have the bank wire you a cheque next week. And if someone should inquire after my brother, do send me a letter."

But he knew, as he climbed into the hansom cab still waiting for him at the curb, that there would not be any letters from Mrs Hudson. The tall windows of the first-floor flat known as 221B Baker Street would stand shuttered and anonymous among the other terraces, the aura of its sometime-inhabitant fading in the minds of those who mattered. And once Mycroft transferred all of Sherlock's money to an account under a different name, agreed-to in those weeks so many years ago when Sherlock had first set up his practice, he knew that there would be no more letters from Italy, either.

Sherlock would either appear, or he would not. But Mycroft had a feeling that he would, just as one feels it when the sound of carriage wheels and horses hooves will sound on the pavement in a thick London fog. It would happen, and the sound would be deafening by comparison to the silence that preceded it.


	7. The Old Lodger's Visit

**The Old Lodger's Visit**

_Author's Notes: Thank you Silverthreads and Susana (I always thank my reviewers – you keep me going!). I should perhaps make clear for this and the previous chapter that I don't think 221B is a street address, but the enumeration of an internal flat or suite of rooms in a building. That is, there would be a 221A, and perhaps a 221C in the same building, 221 Baker Street. This is certainly common practice now, and I suspect that the postal service, with its usual drive towards bureaucracy, would have insisted on some similar arrangement to keep track of individuals living in rented accommodation. So I think Mrs Hudson herself resides in the ground-floor rooms, 221A, and Holmes has 221B on the first-floor, which in a Georgian house (I'm getting the Georgian thing from the Granada series) would have been the best rooms with the highest ceilings and biggest windows. The cellar is the kitchen and scullery, and the attic is for the servants. There may be a 221C, but that's inspiration for a different story altogether! (winks)_

After a leisurely lunch at Selfridge's renowned tearoom, Dr Watson emerged onto the intersection of Bond Street and turned north. Walking briskly down the familiar route through Marylebone past Portman Square toward Regent's Park, he suddenly paused, filled with a heart-stopping confusion. Was this Baker Street? Was he in the right place? The bow-fronted terraces with black ironwork grilles he had happily passed on this exact route for years seemed strange suddenly. Another pedestrian brushed past him, and he was forced to keep walking. Little by little, he grew more comfortable, seeing that his feet were leading him of habit, and soon he was beneath the familiar white arch of 221, the brass letters gleaming in the early afternoon sunlight. He shook off his previous anxiety, straightened his waistcoat, and rang the bell.

There were muffled sounds from the other side, and presently the door swung open.

"Dr Watson!" exclaimed a surprised Mrs Hudson from the interior gloom.

"Good afternoon, Mrs Hudson," Watson greeted his former landlady jovially as he removed his hat and stepped inside.

"What a wonderful surprise! Fancy you stopping by!" Mrs Hudson bustled to take the doctor's coat, hat and gloves. Suddenly, she stopped short of arranging them on the coat stand, and looked at the doctor again, clutching his discarded overclothes tightly. "I can't let you upstairs, of course," she said. "You'll have to go through to my front room. I don't remember ever receiving you in there."

"Always good to try something new," Watson smiled reassuringly. He waited for the older woman to hang up his things and to let him into her little sitting room. She bustled out again to the kitchen to fetch the tea things, and by the time she returned bearing an enormous tray with a kettle and creamer and cups and cakes, he had sat down in the same rosewood armchair occupied by Mycroft Holmes only a few days earlier.

"You must be busy now, with all your patients, and your wife," Mrs Hudson began, as she set down the tea service and began pouring.

"There's always a steady stream at this time of the year," assented the doctor jovially, as he reached for a slice of poppyseed cake. "No epidemics, thank Jove."

"So kind of you to stop by," Mrs Hudson repeated.

"It's nothing, really. I was having lunch with my wife as she was shopping just down the street, and I thought I would drop in and see how you were. Are the new lodgers keeping you busy, then?"

Mrs Hudson hesitated a little, the teapot hovering in mid-air over the sugar bowl. "I haven't had the heart to take in new lodgers, to tell the truth. Not since… You know." She trailed off and put down the teapot.

"No," murmured the doctor, swallowing his cake. "No. None of us have had much closure." He paused, biting the corner of his lip. "Someone asked me the other day, you know – one of my patients, who knew of Holmes, had read some of my stories – he asked me, why there had never been a burial or a public memorial. I answered that his friends preferred to remember him in private, and that he had been a private man who would have preferred to go without ostentatious public lamentation. You know how opposed he was to public sentiment."

Mrs Hudson nodded, but then shook her head, as in regret. "But some memorial would have been only appropriate. All those things he did for people – it's not right to just let it go quietly. It's shameful! Yes, it was his profession, but I know how much he helped people! You wrote those lovely words in that magazine, but one really feels – wishes – there was more!"

"I suppose it was his wish not to. He left all his disposition to his brother, and the final decision must lie with the family," reflected Dr Watson tactfully.

At the mention of Mycroft, Mrs Hudson stole a glance at the ceiling, as if seeing through the fabric of the building to the shuttered rooms upstairs.

"This building, this very address is enough," said the doctor. "It will be remembered by those who wish to recall it, I think. I always think of the days I spent here fondly." He set the teacup down on the saucer with a clink of finality. "I'd best go. I have patients waiting in the surgery. Take care, Mrs Hudson." He shook her hand warmly as he retrieved his coat and hat from the front hall. She let him out and closed the front door behind him.

As he walked down the Marylebone Road to Paddington, his thoughts turned to the cricket that some young men were playing on the Green, and then to his wife, and then to the supper that would wait for him at home after he finished with his patients for the day. Bells from some nearby clock tower rang two as he stepped back into his surgery. It was as if the afternoon had never happened. His heart was strangely light, and the past seemed too distant to recall. As he washed his hands in the basin, the gleam of Holmes' cigarette case caught his eye, and he smiled indulgently, almost wistfully.


	8. The Bookseller of Baker Street

**Chapter Eight**

**The Bookseller of Baker Street**

_Author's Notes: Thank you to Hermione Holmes and Susana. Thanks to everyone for keeping up with this story, even though it took me much longer than anticipated to finish. My goal was to write this final chapter for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's birthday, but I didn't have time, so his birthday week will have to do._

No one seemed to recall seeing the elderly gentleman who disembarked at Waterloo Station having boarded the train from Dover in the first place, but then no one much remarked his existence at all. Indeed, why would anyone pay heed to an old man with white hair, unwieldy baggage and a twitchy, mincing air? He was one of hundreds – why, there was one on any given train, and this one had taken his allotted place on this particular train, fumbling with his bags, heedless of the shy concern of the other ubiquitous train passenger type, the young-woman-away-from-home.

Had anyone bothered to follow the elderly man further (and no one did), they would have observed some very untypical behaviour, however. For directly upon collecting his baggage from the porter, the man hailed a cart with the broad-shouldered confidence of a man of 40 at the height of his powers. While the cart laden with luggage waited for him, he dictated several telegrams at the post office with a strong voice quite out of keeping with his fragile appearance.

But it was to be expected that these actions passed unnoticed in the anonymous crowds of the train station, which shifted like desert dunes, and the old man's cart moved out into the streets of London, forgotten before it could be remembered. It rolled in the sunlight that licked the coal-smeared traces of winter off the house fronts and pavements and nudged the trees sticky with spring leaves and cherry blossoms. The thoroughfares it took bustled with traffic, and it eventually came to a stop outside a tall grey-brick Georgian townhouse with a "To Let" sign partially obscuring its number plaque – 220 Baker Street. It was here that the elderly man was let off.

Two ragged youths, detaching themselves from the iron railings they had been leaning against helped to carry the trunks and crates down the stairs into the cellar of the house. They seemed eager, and greeted the elderly man with an unusual respect. A portly man with a slippery gaze emerged from the front door, producing brass keys from his waistcoat pocket in return for a banknote, which he snatched up with the only type of eagerness he seemed capable of. The transaction finished, he disappeared without a backward glance into a neighbouring shopfront: perhaps it was a tobacconists, or perhaps it was the purveyors of household glass and crystal – it seemed unimportant to note. And then the cart, now empty, drove off again, and the youths sauntered away, their steps a little lighter with half-crowns in their pockets. The elderly gentleman couldn't be seen behind the dark empty windows of the rented house.

But at five o'clock precisely, he emerged again, squinting in the dusk light, pursing his upper lip in a peculiar way. His hands, clad in fingerless black mittens, clutched a stack of books tied with a length of twine. He had the appearance of an itinerant bookseller, and his first cal was to the house directly across the street. Moving with the crab-like gait characteristic of one bent with rheumatism, he opened the iron gate, stepped down the stairs, and rang at the tradesmen's entrance below the front door of 221.

Perhaps the housekeeper who answered the door required extended instruction from the latest edition of _Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management_, for the bookseller emerged over an hour later, with the air of one who had been well-fed, and did not continue his calls down the street. He returned across the street several times after that, each time with some mysterious package that did not leave again with him at the conclusion of his visits.

This, however odd, did not attract attention. But the appearance of a distinctive aquiline profile, backlit in the first-floor windows of 221 that week caused quite a sensation in London's meeting places of iniquity and vice. Luckily for the inconspicuous bookseller, no one observed his own matching profile, smoking an evening pipe in the house across the street.


End file.
